124 
arietis crawling about in one of the cases in his museum on oak branches upont 
which stuffed birds were placed. These cases appear to have then been put npi 
for nearly five years, and the last branches put in them were procured three jea.iT, 
before the insects were seen, and had been well dried over a stove and in a drying?| 
house. _ . ' 
Our readers may remember a similar occurrence of this Clytus in the British) 
Museum, recorded at p. 286 of Vol. iv. of this Magazine, after an interval of 33; 
years. The beetle may surely adopt " Tempora mutantur, nos haud mutamur in illis'" 
for a motto.— E. C. Rye, 7, Park Field, Putney, S.W. 
Curious cat>ture of Lucanus.-FvosY>ectmgjesterd^j for beetles in Wimbledo* 
Park, I found a ? of Inicanus cervus, quite dead, but still moveable as to its limbs,^ 
firmly imbedded in an enormous hard white fungus growing at the root of an old, 
dead, dried-up beech-tree. The fungus had imprisoned the beetle so tightly (" Que 
diable allait-elle faire dans cette Gal&re P") that, when I opened it (with a kuife and 
difficulty), I found a perfect cast of the outline of the thorax, scutellum, elytra, &c. 
—Id., llth September, 1868. 
Occurrence in Britain of Apian cerdo.— It is with much pleasure that 1 find 
myself able to record the discovery of another species of Apion new to Britain. It 
is a large species, of the subulate rostrum group, its place being between craccm 
and suiulatitm ; and, judging from the monograph by M. Wencker of the Europeaii 
species of the genus, I have little hesitation in calling it Apion cerdo, Gerst. It can 
only be confounded with craccce and suhulatum ; from the former of which, inde- 
pendently of other characters, it will be readily distinguished by its more entirely 
black colour, and the fact that in both sexes only the first and second joints of the 
antennse are obscurely ferruginous, the other joints being quit, black. It has much 
the appearance of a rather large and robust A. suhulatum., but is readily distinguished 
by the very different structure of the rostrum. Confusion is likely to arise, however, 
from the fact that in suhulatum the structure of the rostrum is very different in the 
two sexes ; that organ in the <? being evidently dilated beneath at the base, and 
thence gradually narrow to the apex ; whilst in the ? it is scarcely dilated at the 
base, and is longer and thinner than in the <? . Comparing the sexes of A. cerdi 
with A. suhulatum., I find that the $ much resembles the ? of that species, bul 
has the rostrum thicker and more evidently dilated underneath ; the ? s of the 
two species are, however, very different, for the ? of A. cerdo, instead of the long 
thin rostrum of A. suhulatum, has its rostrum very broad and dilated at the base 
(nearly as much so as in A. cracccB), and suddenly constricted at the insertion ol 
the antenna?. I have found both sexes here on Yida cracca, in the month of July i 
but it appears to be very rare, many visits to the field where'I took it having pro- 
duced me only seven specimens. This is not the first time, however, that the 
insect has been taken in this country, for Mr. Lennon captured an example m som« 
flood refuse at Dumfries, early in the spring of this year. There is also a specimet 
of the ? in Mr. G. R. Crotch's collection, taken by Mr. Wollaston, at Killarney. 1 
took a specimen of A. suhulatum on a common species of Vicia with yellow flowers 
in the same field where I found the A. cerclo.-D. Sharp, Bellevue, Thornhill 
Dumfries, Septemher 1st, 1868. 
